A large and growing population of users is enjoying entertainment through the consumption of digital media items, such as music, movies, images, electronic books, and so on. The users employ various electronic devices to consume such media items. Among these electronic devices (referred to herein as user devices) are electronic book readers, cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), portable media players, tablet computers, netbooks, laptops and the like. These electronic devices wirelessly communicate with a communications infrastructure to enable the consumption of the digital media items. In order to wirelessly communicate with other devices, these electronic devices include one or more antennas.
The conventional antenna usually has only one resonant mode in the lower frequency band and one resonant mode in the high-band. One resonant mode in the lower frequency band and one resonant mode in the high-band may be sufficient to cover the required frequency band in some scenarios, such as in 3G applications. 3G, or 3rd generation mobile telecommunication, is a generation of standards for mobile phones and mobile telecommunication services fulfilling the International Mobile Telecommunications-2000 (IMT-2000) specifications by the International Telecommunication Union. Application services include wide-area wireless voice telephone, mobile Internet access, video calls and mobile TV, all in a mobile environment. The required frequency bands for 3G applications may be GSM850/EGSM in low-band and DCS/PCS/WCDMA in high-band. The 3G band is between 824 MHz and 960 MHz. Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE Advanced (sometimes generally referred to as 4G) bands are communication standards that have been standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). However, in order to extend the frequency coverage down to 700 MHz for 4G/LTE application, antenna bandwidth needs to be increased especially in the low-band. There are two common LTE bands used in the United States from 704 MHz-746 MHz (Band 17) and from 746 MHz-787 MHz (Band 13). Conventional solutions increase the antenna size or use active tuning elements to extend the bandwidth. Alternatively, conventional solutions use separate antennas to achieve different frequency bands and use a switch to switch between the antennas. These solutions are not conducive to use in user devices, often because of the size of the available space for antennas within the device.